This blog provides short, easy-to-digest summaries of recently published research relating to bullying, peer-aggression and peer-victimization. It is maintained by staff and students from the School of Psychological Sciences and Health at the University of Strathclyde.

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November 04, 2013

Children's perspectives on cyberbullying: definitions, bullies' motives, and help seeking.

Our third blog post today, from one of my dissertation students. Calum Harris prepared this one which relates to cyberbullying. Thanks to Calum, and all the other undergraduate students who have worked hard on these.

This
study sets out to gain a better insight as to how adolescents describe and
perceive cyberbullying. Specifically, the researchers focussed on elementary
school children’s perspectives as this age group has been very under sourced so
far. To achieve a better view of the children’s perspectives group discussions
about cyberbullying with the researcher and children were carried out. The researchers
restricted the topics discussed but allowed the children to freely discuss what
they wanted within the given topic.

Twenty
eight children aged 11-12 years old took part in this study. Seven were taken
from 4 different elementary schools, and all participated in the study for 6
weeks. Over these 6 weeks the children and the researchers met up once a week
to discuss a specific aspect of cyberbullying. The children were given control
over what was discussed, as long as it was within confines of the topic given
by the researcher.

Incident and impact

Half
the participants reported being bullied and 5 reported bullying others. The
main impact mentioned was fear: fear of further cyberbullying, fear of
escalation into violence, and fear of the bully’s unknown identity.

Differentiating cyberbullying from innocent pranks

The
children noted two characteristics they believed separated cyberbullying from pranks,
these being repetition and intention to harm. The researchers note that both of
these characteristics do not always work in differentiating cyberbullying from
pranks. Many people can watch a harmful youtube video once, but it still causes
the bullied individual harm. Judging a person’s intentions is subjective and
often ambiguous; one person may see their actions as a joke while another may
see them as bullying.

Motives of bullies

An
internal drive (e.g., a desire to bully others), negative experiences with the
victim (e.g., losing a game against them) and characteristics of the victim (e.g.,
the victim wearing the “wrong clothes”) were all discussed as motives to bully.
It was also decided that each motive did not have to be operate exclusively.

Thresholds for seeking help

Children
often said that feelings of shame caused by being cyberbullied were the main
reason for not seeking help, especially if they were discouraged from going on
the internet by parents in the first place. Further bullying from other
students also dissuaded individuals from telling their teacher or parents. The
biggest inhibitor however is the fear of having their internet taken away, with
some children expressing a vehement need for the technology.

Empowerment

By
the end of week 6 all children were against cyberbullying. The majority of
children also agreed they would intervene if cyberbullying happened near them,
and would know what to do if they themselves were being cyberbullied.

The
results of this study support previously found perceptions of cyberbullying,
highlighting and better explaining its ambiguous nature. It draws attention to
the distressing experience of being bullied by an unknown person, and the
trepidation children experience when considering telling a caregiver or parent
for fear of them over-reacting.

Overall
the results demonstrate the difficulty in defining cyberbullying, and as a
consequence the difficulties in dealing with a possible case of cyberbullying
as each case is victim to the same level of ambiguity as the definition is. The
use of group discussions was found to be good at creating enthusiasm over the
topic, however whether it will continue to be able to do so over a longer
period of time is unknown. The findings suggest that more information on
cyberbullying should be available, and a bullying policy should be made so the
children know what to expect if they are bullied, therefore alleviating any
trepidation the child may feel over the possible fallout of seeking adult help.